Oscar nominations will be released Jan. 24, and both films are already getting buzz. Correy, who is back home for the holidays, is not playing favourites. “I love both these movies,” he says.

Correy grew up sketching and drawing cartoons. His favourite animation was in the films of the Disney renaissance that began 1989 with The Little Mermaid and led to Aladdin, the Lion King and Toy Story.

At Hillcrest High School, he took Grade 9 art, then quit before he was persuaded to pick up a course called “communications technologies.” By early Grade 12, with some prodding from his teacher, Correy was thinking about taking his interest in art and filmmaking and marrying the two in animation. He applied to Algonquin College’s animation program.

The first two years of the three-year course focused on technical subjects like life drawing. In the third year, the students produce a short animated film.

Correy felt he was one of the weaker artists in the program and had to push himself. “Not a lot of schools teach hand-drawn animation anymore. It’s such as good, fundamental way to learn.”

Ottawa has a vibrant animation community — Correy estimates 2,000 people work in the field in the city. His first job was at Ottawa’s Mercury Filmworks, where he worked one summer on a children’s series about a pair of pigs called Toot and Puddle. After graduation, Correy returned to Mercury where he spent two years, eventually moving into storyboarding.

He moved to Vancouver in December 2010 and worked for Sony on The Smurfs. It was the first time he worked with computer animation. Correy still doesn’t consider himself to be a technician, even though he works at a computer all day. “I love the drawing aspect. The computer is just another tool, like a pencil. ”

Correy first applied to Disney in 2008, setting his sights on the talent development program, an apprenticeship for recent graduates that attracts as many as 1,000 applicants a year.

“I always wanted to work at Disney, not Pixar or DreamWorks. It was always Disney animation for me,” he says.

Correy sent off demo reel after demo reel. “I applied every time they posted a job. Maybe it was borderline harassment.”

He honed his skills by competing the in the 11 Second Club, which challenges animators to create vignettes by taking snippets of dialogue and animating the characters to perform the lines.

A lot of animators film themselves, then translate it into animation. Correy prefers not to work that way — the character would look too much like himself, he says. “We’re actors with pencils. We’re trying to bring this character to life,”

He was accepted at Disney in his last year of eligibility and started work on Wreck-It Ralph, which was released in 2012, then moved on to crowd scenes in the 2013 hit Frozen. He was a member of the team that animated Olaf, a snowman whose head, twig arms and carrot nose are in constant danger of separating from his body.

In an animated film, the story artists draw the overall pictures and the character dynamics. The directors tell the animators about the characters, and how they’re feeling in that particular moment. The animators interpret with small mannerisms and facial expressions. “There’s a lot of room for us to contribute to the bigger story,” says Correy.

“Olaf is very special to me. He suited my sensibilities. I love the pantomime. Charlie Chaplin is one of my favourites. Olaf’s physical humour was a joy to bring to life.”

Flash the sloth steals the show in Zootopia.Disney /
AP

In Zootopia, Correy helped to animate Nick Wild, a con artist fox voiced by Jason Bateman, and Judy Hopps, an idealistic police bunny voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, as well as the scene-stealing Flash and Priscilla, a pair of particularly languid sloths. The sloth sequence was used in the trailer for the film.

He also worked in a musical sequence in Moana, featuring a song called You’re Welcome sung by Dwayne Johnson, who plays the beefy demigod whose tattoos come to life.

“I’m a huge fan. Animating him singing was amazing.”

Correy’s desk in the Burbank, California, Disney studios is down the hall from animator and director Eric Goldberg. Correy considers Goldberg to be a living link between Disney’s Nine Old Men, the first generation of pioneering animators who joined Disney in the 1920 and ’30s, and Disney’s modern era.

“It’s surreal,” he says. “He’s a legend. He animated the genie in Aladdin.”

What are the next frontiers for animation? It’s a job just keeping up with it, says Correy, who is working on Wreck-It Ralph II, scheduled for 2018 release.

“The future at Disney is just great storytelling. If you have a good heart and a good story, people just walk away with that.”

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